When you use govDelivery to send a message, you receive a bulletin detail report with delivery and engagement metrics. This includes the number and percentage of subscribers who clicked on any link within the message. A higher number of clicks indicates greater subscriber engagement and tells you that your message is resonating with its audience.

However, not all links are equal. One link in your email might be more important if your message is designed to drive subscribers to a certain action, such as:

  • Registering for an event
  • Renewing a license
  • Viewing and printing a waiver form

Using govDelivery's segmentation feature, you can target subsequent messages to your subscribers based on whether they clicked a particular link. This lets you create a subscriber-centric communications strategy, tailoring your messages for maximum effectiveness. 

How it Works

  1. Using link link tracking parameters, you can essentially flag an individual link in your bulletin. Link tracking parameters are small pieces of code that can be appended to the end of links appearing in your organization’s bulletins.
  2. You can then create a segment, filtering your subscribers based on click activity. Your click activity criteria filter will target the link tracking parameter you created.
  3. Your segment will query subscribers, selecting only those who clicked (or did not click) on the link you flagged with the link tracking parameters. 

Segmenting Based on an Individual Link 

To start, you will need a good understanding of how link tracking parameters work. You can find a thorough explanation of how link tracking parameters work as well as instructions for setting them in the Tracking govDelivery Traffic article.

With that knowledge in-hand, use the following steps:

  1. Set link tracking parameters on the link of interest in your bulletin. 
    A few things to note:
    • Your link tracking key must start with utm_ in order for a govDelivery segment to track activity on the link.
    • Both the link tracking key and value must contain only lowercase characters.
    • Make sure your link tracking parameters contain a unique key and value pairing.
    • Pay attention to the spelling used within the parameters. You will need to remember your key and value later when you create your segment.
  2. Create your segment. Instructions can be found in the Using Segments article.
  3. When applying filtering criteria, select Clicked under Bulletin Activity.
  4. Change the first field to either clicked a link or did not click a link.
  5. Change the next field to which includes the UTM parameter.
  6. Enter the unique key and value pairing you chose when setting the parameter. The key field provides common options in a drop-down menu, but you can enter any key you used.